Puck Me Harder

CHAPTER 17

ELLE

Sienna's office is quiet when I walk in.

Too quiet. The kind of quiet that means she's been preparing for this conversation, and she's not going to let me wiggle out of it.

"Sit," she says, and she doesn't look angry. She looks worried. Which is somehow worse.

I sit.

"What's going on with you and Blake Delvalle?" she asks directly.

"Nothing," I say immediately.

Sienna leans back in her chair. She studies me for a long moment.

"Elle," she says, and her voice is soft. "I'm trying to protect you, but I can't do that if you're lying to me."

Something in her tone the gentleness, the genuine care breaks something open in me.

I don't say anything. I just start crying.

Not delicately. Not the kind of crying where you maintain composure. Real crying. Messy, gasping, the kind of crying that comes from someone who's been holding it together for too long.

Sienna doesn't say anything. She just pulls a box of tissues from her drawer and sets it on the desk between us.

And I break.

"He had photos of me," I say, and the words spill out like I can't control them anymore. "From five years ago. Intimate photos. He kept them all this time, and when I came back to cover The Forge, he showed them to me and he made a deal with me. He said I could stay embedded with the team as long as I proved that the photos meant nothing to me. That I was over him."

Sienna's expression doesn't change, but I can see her processing this.

"That's blackmail," she says quietly.

"I know."

"Elle, that's—"

"I know what it is," I say, and I'm crying harder now. "I know it's wrong. I know I should have walked away. But I didn't because he was right—I couldn't prove that the photos meant nothing to me because they did mean something. They meant that he kept them. They meant that some part of him still wanted me."

I'm not making sense. I know I'm not making sense. But I can't stop.

"And then he started backing me against walls and making me feel wanted and I remembered what it felt like to be loved by him and I thought maybe we could actually fix this. I thought maybe five years was enough time for both of us to change."

"But it wasn't," Sienna says gently.

"No. It wasn't. Because he's still the same person. He still chooses hockey over everything. He still makes me small. He still uses possession as a substitute for love." I wipe my face with the back of my hand. "And I still let him."

"Elle—"

"I'm falling in love with him again," I say, and the words sound like a confession of murder. "And it's destroying my career. My credibility is shot. Sponsors are pulling out. My objectivity is being questioned. And I don't even care because I just want him to love me the way I love him."

I'm hyperventilating now. Sienna comes around the desk and sits next to me.

"Hey," she says softly. "Look at me."

I look at her.

"This is not your fault," she says. "Do you understand me? What Blake did—showing you those photos, making that deal, using leverage to keep you close—that's not something you're responsible for. That's something he's responsible for."

"But I went back to him. I kept going back to him."

"Because he conditioned you to," Sienna says. "Because he made you dependent on his attention. Because he used your own desire against you." She takes my hand. "That's not love, Elle. That's abuse."

The word lands like a punch. Abuse. I've been calling it possession, calling it passion, calling it the price of loving someone like Blake Delvalle.

But Sienna's right. It's abuse.

"I know," I whisper.

"Okay," Sienna says. "Now that we've established that, we need to figure out how to fix this."

"How?" I ask. "My career is destroyed. My credibility is gone. Every piece I write is going to be questioned. I'm toxic."

"You're not toxic," Sienna says firmly. "But you're in a complicated situation. And we need to be strategic about how we handle it."

She stands up and walks to her office door. She closes it.

When she comes back, she sits directly in front of me.

"I have a solution," she says. "But you won't like it."